


changed with despair her body sweet

by Nomette



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Quest: Promise of Destruction, Drama, F/M, Red Lyrium Cullen, Tragedy, villain AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-04-16
Packaged: 2018-10-15 22:04:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10558436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomette/pseuds/Nomette
Summary: Seeking the remains of her order, Cassandra ventures alone to Caer Oswin, where she is held prisoner by the Red General, commander of the armies of Corepheus- Cullen Rutherford.





	

**Author's Note:**

> God, that makes time and ruins it  
> And alters not, abiding God,  
> Changed with disease her body sweet  
> The body of love wherein she abode
> 
> \- Swineburne, "The Leper"

 

 Cassandra’s blood steams from the snow. Her opponent circles, close enough that Cassandra can hear his ragged breathing. Around them, the red templars form a silent wall. The Red General’s forces had jeered and laughed at first, drumming their hands against their shields, making a thunder that shook the ground, but as the match had worn on they’d grown silent. Respectful. Cassandra’s never fought so well; in a better world there would be someone to carry news of her death back, someone to tell Leliana that she fought to the last.

This is no better world, and Cassandra will die alone, bereft of her seeker powers, hemmed in by these beasts and the monster before her. The Red General is not a tall man; under his armor he’s barely bigger than Cassandra, and barely stronger. But it’s enough. Cassandra is heart-sick, weary. Her side throbs where the Red General shattered her armor and her thigh is sticky with chilled, coagulating blood. The snow underfoot has been trampled into pink-stained mush by the long back and forth of her duel. She prepares for one last charge, ready to batter herself to death on the jagged shield the Red General wields.

“Cassandra,” he says, and pauses. Gestures to his men. Two templars close. Cassandra lifts her sword and prepares to fight to the last syllable of breath in her body, to the last twitch of her hands. She will not win this fight. There is a kind of relief in reaching the end. 

The Red General lifts the latch of his helmet, hands it to one of his men. Cassandra doesn’t recognize his face. Pale, with blond hair and feverish red eyes. A scar on his lip.

“I’ve never seen such skill with a sword, Seeker,” he says.

“The void take you,” Cassandra tells him. He smiles.

“Come with me---” Cassandra’s charge cuts the sentence short. She cuts one of the red templars to the floor, breaking the circle, and slams her shield into the next. She will not run. One templar falls. Then another. The world is narrow, and growing narrower. A short, sharp pain. Her shield shatters. The Red General’s charge knocks her from her feet. The ground hits her all at once, knocking the breath from her lungs. It’s finally over. The last thing Cassandra remembers is the cold, the terrible cold, the snow drifting down on her dying body like a shroud.

 

There’s a blanket over Cassandra’s shoulders. She tugs blindly at the edge and her fingers meet fur, skidding along the rough hairs. Some kind of animal, she thinks, and the thought brings her closer to the edge of sleep. Her senses report in slowly, like scouts who’ve walked so long in the snow they’ve forgotten their message.

She’s been stripped of her armor.  Her sword-arm is weak. Her sword is gone. She sits bolt-upright, clutching at the fur. She’s in a small cell, the bars of which look out onto a small office. On the other side of the bars is the Red General, his helmet sitting by his side, humming a tuneless marching song and paging his way through a stack of reports with a bored expression. There’s a fire in the fireplace, and a mabari sitting sleepily by the fire. Cassandra’s throat is raw and aching, but it’s her mind that’s stripped bare, too desolate by far to process what she sees.

She searches her cell desperately for a knife, a plate that might be broken, a spoon-- but there’s nothing, only a soft cot and the furs. The movement must make some noise, because the mabari whines and the general raises his head and looks at her. His eyes are the color of blood, fresh from a cut.

“If you mean to force me, you must know that I will die first.” The general sighs, looks faintly embarrassed.

“Cassandra, if you wanted to die, you would be dead. You have had all the opportunity in the world to die, but instead, you have persevered. I have no designs against you.”

“Than why am I here?” Up close, the general is oddly familiar, although she cannot place the face. The unnatural shine of the eyes distracts her, but she forces herself to look closer. Blond hair, pale skin, a scar on one lip which is the mocking twin of the one on her cheek. She saw this face long ago, attached to a beggar pleading for lyrium on the streets of Kirkwall.

“Cullen?”

“Indeed,” Cullen says, and smiles. His face is full and healthy, his skin flushed, as though from strong exertion or a fever. Only the red gleam of his eyes betrays the infection eating away at his body.

“How? No, wait. Do not tell me. I have no wish to hear ravings about Corypheus.”

“I am not the Chantry,” Cullen says, and his voice is heavy with hatred on the last word. “I do not ask you to believe. I only expect you to see.”

“Do not be surprised when your ravings fail to convince me.” Cullen smiles, then shakes his head.

“I do not expect to find you easy to persuade. Your stubbornness is legendary. Admirable, even, if devoted to the wrong people.” Cassandra half-expects a rant, but Cullen returns to his work. Cassandra is forced to sit and watch as Cullen reads through the reports, occasionally pausing to scribble something down. Despite the unnatural nature of his campaign, he frowns like any other commander beset by field reports. Cassandra draws the furs up around her and watches, shivering. The fire is not close enough, not with the familiar exhaustion of blood loss beginning to sit in. Whatever stupidity the Red General is planning, Cassandra wants him to be done with it.

“If you’re going to kill me, get on with it.” Cullen marks his place with a bookmark before turning to her. He looks vaguely exasperated. Cassandra resents the expression. It belongs on a friend, not a murderous maniac.

“I have no plans to execute you at this time.” Cassandra glares at him. This is shaping up to be political, and she doesn’t have the patience for it.

“I killed many of your men.” That does draw an expression from Cullen: a certain tightness around the eyes, a stiffness in the jaw. “I broke their shields and cut down the archers. If you let me loose in the castle, I will kill more of them.”

“Why are you so set on dying?” Cullen asks. Cassandra snarls at him.

“I will not be your captive, and sit in this cell like a songbird.”

“More like a screech-owl,” Cullen mutters. “Don’t worry. We are only waiting for another guest.”

“Who?” Cassandra demands.

“Lord Seeker Lucius.” Words fail Cassandra; her fists go tight. She would strike him if she could. “Perhaps you will find him more persuasive than me.”

 

Time passes, the minutes falling through Cassandra’s fingers like snow. She sleeps unwillingly and wakes to a cold room, cold food waiting for her just outside the bars. The mabari is gone, the fire only banked ashes. Cassandra eats through the bars, the metal harsh against her skin. The cut on her sword arm itches slightly. There’s a ring of frost on the pitcher left for her, but she gulps the water down anyway. Cullen’s left a note; Cassandra crumples it, unread, and returns to sleep. If she dreams, the nightmares are no different than usual; the bounce of her brother’s head against the floor, her parents swaying from the gallows.

When she wakes, the mabari is back. He shuffles over to the bars, licks at her fingers. Someone’s removed her plate.

“I must be getting old,” Cassandra tells the dog, cross. She’s not normally a heavy sleeper, but the battle sapped her strength. No, not just the battle. The long trek from Skyhold to here, the endless walking through the snow, the solitude, the knowledge that no one was following her: these things weakened her before she ever set foot in Caer Oswin.

If Varric were still alive, he would call her foolishly heroic, but Varric is under the earth, along with the ends of all the stories Cassandra so desperately loved. Perhaps the Champion can find him there. Perhaps they are together now in the fade, or in the Maker’s Mercy. Cassandra shakes the thought from her head and reaches out to pet the mabari, who snuffles and presses his head against the bar for scratches.

“I thought you were supposed to be beasts of good sense,” Cassandra tells him. “What are you doing with the Red General?” The mabari whines and flops to the ground. The two of them wait, companions in the gloomy silence. Cassandra dozes, slipping between exhaustion and suspicion, afraid that at any moment a behemoth will come crashing through the door. If she were Josephine perhaps she could talk her way out, but words have never been Cassandra’s weapons.

At last, the solid thunk of the door opening, and the Red General comes into the room. His armor glows, gives off a heat that raises goosebumps on Cassandra’s arms.  

“You’re looking better,” Cullen says, sounding pleased. He takes off his helmet and lays it on the table with a heavy clunk.

“I did not know you cared so much for my health, General,” Cassandra spits. Her arm is still weak, but she thinks she could hold a sword long enough to slit a man’s throat. Cullen shrugs and begins to undo his armor. It’s strangely intimate watching him undo the straps on his shoulder; Cassandra knows at a glance that he hasn’t had a squire in years, and has accustomed himself to dressing on his own. She stands against the bars and powerfully resents her lack of sword.

Under the armor, Cullen is broad-shouldered, human. No crystals break through his arms, no red traces his veins. He turns, meeting her angry gaze, and flushes slightly.

“I don’t mean anything untowards by changing, but I haven’t got anywhere else to do it. If I’d stuck you in our standard prison, you’d have broken out and murdered my guards by now. We’re not accustomed to prisoners of your caliber, I’m afraid.”

“No, by all means,” Cassandra responds acidly. “How noble to offer yourself to be murdered first. Why not give me a sword and be done with it?” Cullen chuckles.

“No, I don’t think so.” He finishes removing his armor, placing each piece back on the training dummy with great care, then strips out of his tunic, leaving his chest bare. Human, still, and vulnerable. Cassandra longs to shove a sword between his ribs, but is forced to just watch, helpless, as he changes into a ceremonial set of armor.

“I didn’t think the monsters outside cared for parade dress,” Cassandra comments.

“They can still hear me,” Cullen comments. “You don’t think we just send them out at random, do you? They follow our orders. More than can be said for you, Seeker.”

“If you were any kind of templar you would let me out of this cell.” Cullen smiles. It’s very sharp.

“Fortunately, I am not a templar.” He finishes changing into dress armor and advances towards her prison. Cassandra retreats from the bars, wary of being caught in his gauntlets.

“Lucius is here,” he tells her, his eyes gleaming like candles. “If you’ll join us for dinner, I’ll give you back your armor.”

“But not my sword?” Cassandra says.

“Perhaps, if you find yourself wanting to murder someone other than me.” Cassandra weighs the offer, such as it is. Her situation is not exactly inviting, and she is unlikely to improve it by staying in her cell.

“I accept.”

 

The General is not as stupid as Cassandra had hoped; he has her paralyzed and restrained by magic before he throws her armor into her cage. The mage, a pale, hollow-eyed woman, lifts the paralysis just long enough for Cassandra to dress, then leashes her with a rope of lightning. Her door is opened at last, and Cassandra is led through the empty castle, past singing clusters of crystal and empty halls, past looming guards and sneering venatori spies.

The mage leads her to an empty corridor and stops. Cassandra stares, blank, at the empty wall. She has never thought too much about her death; she leaves those sort of obsessions to her relatives in Nevarra. She does not close her eyes. If it is now, let it be now.

The wall shivers and opens with a low groan. Cassandra’s heart skips with sudden, embarrassing relief. She is not dead. Not yet. A nauseating smell emanates from the room; it smells of dust and rot and tonight’s dinner, all mixed in one. Cassandra is caught between repulsion and ferocious hunger. The collar around her neck crackles, and she stumbles forward.

It is a small room, barely wide enough for a person to stand in. A spy room. A low rumble, and door closes; Cassandra lunges, not wanting to die entombed in this tiny space, but the collar forces her back, and she is trapped in the stifling darkness. The collar is gone. Cassandra is alone.

In the cramped, tiny space, a scream shaking through her whole body, Cassandra finds a tiny spot of light. Two spots. She leans forward, and sees- the dining room. Cullen, seated at one end of the table. Lucius, at the other. No! Whatever they show her can only be a lie created for her benefit. She closes her eyes and endures alone in the darkness until she hears Lucius’ voice raised in a shout.

Four times a day she heard that voice as a seeker in training, calling her to prayer, to lunch, to practice, to bed. The whole castle rose and fell on the sound of Lucius’ voice calling them to their stations. It has not lost the power to move her. She leans in, looks through the hole, allows her ear to press close to the listening tube.

“Where is she? I know that Cassandra Pentaghast is somewhere in this castle!” Lucius is on his feet, shouting, and Cullen is watching him, unworried, from his seat. If the years have improved Cullen, they have cost Lucius. He is gaunt, thin-faced. His armor fits him badly. His eyes are sunken and beady. Cassandra feels a stab of relief that they are not red.

“Why so worried, Lucius?” Cullen asks, and takes a drink of his wine. “We serve the same master. Have you done something to displease him?”  

“Displease him?” Lucius falls back into his seat with a bark of laughter. “It is you who displease him, with your plotting. You invite usurpers to my castle, to rob of me of my command.”

“What command, Lucius? How many of seekers are still left, Lucius? There were never many of you. The lyrium kills you more often than not. Fifty? Are there fifty seekers left?” Lucius does not respond. Cassandra digs her nails into her palms, clinging to the pain as a lifeline against the vertiginous despair in her chest. Less than fifty seekers, when once they had filled the halls of the castle twice over.

“Never mind how many of us are left,” Lucius says. “The seekers are weak. I will make a new order, from better material.”

“A man ought to work with the materials in front of him,” Cullen says, and sets his wineglass heavily on the table.

“Cassandra will never bow to you.”

“Good, as I am uninterested in bowing, and less interested in killing good men.” Cassandra snorts, and remembers too late that she’s spying. At least Lucius hasn’t noticed. She watches him as he eats, a heavy knot of hatred sitting in her heart. She’d wondered about the lack of reports, the way her letters to Daniel went unanswered. If she’d been more proactive, had been what she claims to be, a seeker of truth, would it have gotten this far? Could she have stopped it?

“You will do as you are told, Cullen.”

“And who will tell me? You? Did Corypheus send a message complaining about my men, complaining about our victories? I doubt it.” Lucius slams his hands down on the table, making it shake.

“I am your superior!” he shouts. “I led you to this place! I let you use my hall! I, and I alone, lifted you from the gutter, made you a commander of men. You will obey me.”

“I have learned the rewards of obedience, _Lord Seeker_.”

“That is no longer my title,” Lucius says. “I am Lord of the Order of the Fiery Promise.”

“For now,” Cullen says. “A poor Lord, who commands no men. Even now, your seekers are dying in the chapel.” There is a click. The wall in front of Cassandra shifts slightly. Opens. The dizzy rage in Cassandra reaches a peak. She shoves the door open and steps out into the hall armed with nothing but her rage.

“Lucius,” she demands. “How could you?”

“What is the meaning of this, Cullen?” Lucius asks.  By response, Cullen stands, draws a sword - her sword- and sets it on the table.

“Lady Pentaghast,” he says. The meaning is clear. Cassandra dashes for the sword; lucky that these tables are so long. Once, there were so many seekers that the officers alone barely fit at these crowded tables. Now it is only her and Lucius, their footsteps racing in parallel. She seizes the sword. Cullen has stepped out of the room, the door locking behind him.

“Traitor,” she says.

The fight is short.

Rage blots out Cassandra’s thoughts and her memories; it reduces her to a thing that cuts. Lucius is soon sprawled on the ground under her, blood leaking from his broken nose, her blade at his throat.

“They were my seekers to kill,” he says. Cassandra’s fury is so great it blots out her thoughts. She hardly remembers striking the blow. Only when Lucius is dead, his head hewn from his body, does she return to herself. She is standing over the corpse, her breath trembling with fury, alone in the abandoned hall with the blood-stink of meat. She has never liked decapitations. Anthony’s head bounced on the ground, when they killed him. He didn’t look her brother anymore when she caught his head, but that last moment of horror is the clearest memory she has of him. Now, Lucius will live like this forever as well, a headless corpse sprawled on the floor. Stupid old man. Cassandra had loved him.

She staggers blindly forward, eyes dimmed with tears of grief. The door through which Cullen came is shut. But the other door, the one that leads to the chapel, the door through which Lucius entered. That one is open.

Cassandra shuffles forward, her body half crippled with pain, sure that there can be nothing good ahead and nothing good behind. Her legs long to sit, to lie down, never to rise again. But she cannot. She must stand. She must go on, even if her body has outlived her heart. Through the rotted halls she goes, past silent corpses and singing crystals, called into the chapel by a distant voice.

The chapel of truth. Cassandra meditated for many months before being allowed into this place, struggled to dim the anger burning in her heart. Now, at the end of all things, she feels nothing but the sluggish pounding of her heart, but still she goes on.

The chapel doors are open.

Inside, her apprentice sits bleeding at the altar.

“Daniel!” Cassandra shouts, and runs to him.

“No,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper. “Leave…”

“No,” she says. “What is it? What has happened here?”

“The Seeker ritual,” he says, eyes wide, fixated unblinkingly on some unknown horror. “It is not what we thought.” Trembling with great effort, he focuses on her. “A demon resides in this chapel. We were made tranquil, made open. Empty. The demon controls us. We are, all of us, abominations.” His fingers grasp at her shoulders.

“The Maker…” The word sits painfully in her mouth. All this time, she had thought her powers the sign of some blessing, some gift. And yet. The hairs on the back of her neck rise. She remembers now. As apprentices they had meditated, fasted, slept on hard stone, searching for that perfect calm, for that place beyond thought, beyond feeling. Cassandra had struggled, preoccupied by that burning hatred that rushed in to take Anthony’s place when he died.

The morning of the ritual, there had been lyrium in their drink. Cassandra had gone to the chapel with her mouth still numb with the sweet taste. It had been the last sense to vanish as she stood, gazing upwards, her mind blotted out by the thing in the chapel. For that moment she had been empty, and in the stillness she had seen and been seen...

An unbearable coldness sweeps over her, making her skin rise in frigid bumps. Her armor burns with cold, the metal sticking to her skin. She grasps blindly at her vambraces, throwing them off with numb fingers. The breastplate takes a line of frozen skin when she rips it away from her body, shaking with full body shivers. Daniel watches with mute eyes as she unbuckles her pauldrons, and then there is nothing. Her breath steams in the frigid air.

Daniel lifts numb fingers and points clumsily behind her.

She stands and knows, as in a nightmare, that the spirit is behind, beside, above, beneath, inside her. It is this whole chapel. It is Cassandra herself. Still. Even if it is a lie, she is called. To turn, to face it.

The chapel windows are covered with ice, and the candles burn blue. Cassandra gazes into the sky and the skin of her hand catches and tears, frozen to the hilt of her sword. A hole in the world opens, and for the last time, faith descends into the chapel, called by the last of her children. Beauty scatters from her face, changing more quickly than the eyes can process, the glowing shape turned dark and cold, the mouth opening and closing in a scream of despair.

 

Cullen is waiting when she stumbles from the chapel, Daniel tucked under her arm, the both of them trembling. Cassandra cannot let go of her sword. Cullen catches her as she stumbles, orders one of his men to bring a bucket of hot water. The words are nothing but noise, empty syllables with no meaning. Cassandra is full to the brim with horror. There is no room for anything else in her.

“I saw it,” she says. Her chest is full of ice. It feels as though cold water ought to gush from her mouth with every word.

“What?” Cullen asks.

“The truth,” Cassandra says, and does not speak again. She sits, silent, as Cullen’s men apply hot water and bandages to her skin until, at last, her blue fingers can be peeled away, digit by digit, from her sword. Her hands are bruised with cold, the ruined muscles and nerves twitching with static signals. They prop her up and leave her. The fire flickers like a picture, casting no warmth, nothing but an illusion. Cassandra has seen the thing behind the smoke.

Time passes. The fire goes out. The air grows heavy and thick. Snow falls in white flakes, coating the bench. Ice crystals grow in the empty spaces of the bench, and still Cassandra does not move.

People come. Cassandra is lifted, thawed. Voices discuss the snow, the roof over their head, the sunlight outside. It does not matter. Cassandra is given water. She cannot drink. She is put in a bed, covered with blankets. Her eyes are closed. Impossibly, she sleeps.

 

Pain wakes her; the sheets rubbing against her blistered fingers. She sits, up, glances around. Cullen is back at his desk, poring over reports. Two templars stand by the door, guarding her. She is in his bed. Someone has wrapped her fingers in bandages. Once again, her sword and armor are gone.

“Ser,” one of templars says. Cullen closes his book, turns towards her.

“Cassandra. How are you feeling?”

“Like I fought a whole battalion,” she says sourly. She rises, walks to his desk, lifts his goblet and drinks. Then she tries to strangle him.

Her hand protests each movement,  blood oozing between the cracks of her skin, white pain shooting clear up to her elbow, but still she tries. Cullen is red when his templars finally pull her off him. His breath rattles and rasps like a dying man, but he does not seem perturbed.

The burst of anger has exhausted Cassandra; she lies motionless between the two soldiers and waits. There are four of them in the room; Cassandra, the two templars holding her, and Cullen. The templars holding her are not gentle. They track Cullen with an attention closer to hunger than obedience, eager for the command that will permit violence against her, but Cullen does not speak. There is a fine tremor beginning at the tip of Cassandra’s arms, her muscles straining vainly against some unbearable weight. She is betrayed from top to bottom. Her body has failed her. Her sword burned with cold in her grip. Her shield shattered during the duel. She has failed Varric, failed her order, failed the Inquisition. A demon rattles inside of her like the wind in the windows. She is an abomination.

“Kill me,” Cassandra says. Cullen regards her mutely, then glances towards the door.

“No,” he rasps.

“Kill me,” she demands. “A demon lives inside me. Even a templar such as you should recognize your duty.” It costs her even to speak the truth; the memory of the chapel presses unbearably on the inside of her temples.  

“I am not a templar,” Cullen says, and there is such hate in it. “Are you so beholden to the Chantry, that you will carry out their will even now? They put that demon in you.” The last of Cassandra’s rage bubbles up, and she lunges away from the templars, freeing one hand. There is a letter-opener on the table. Cassandra attempts to open her own throat. Her weapon is snatched away and Cassandra is thrown back in her prison.

 

Time passes like the wind in a hollow space. Cassandra is stiff with grief. A thin red line is scored on her neck, the only sign that she ever left her cell at all. There is a hole in her through which everything is draining out; chivalry, obedience, hatred, love, and yet she is still alive.

Cullen returns later. The marks of Cassandra’s nails are still on his throat. Four bruises in the shape of her fingers are growing on his neck. Cassandra watches, uninterested. It is merely that he is in front of her.

“What are your plans, Cassandra?” Cullen asks. Cassandra has no plans. She supposes she will sit until something happens, or Cullen kills her. She does not bother to say so. Cullen is displeased by her silence, for he frowns and advances towards the bars.

“I have something for you,” Cullen says. “Your apprentice.” Something old stirs in Cassandra. Habit, perhaps. She has wished to die with all her heart, and yet her body continues. It lifts its head, and nods.

“Bring him,” Cullen says. The thing that they return with is not Daniel, though it has his aspect. The surface is wrong. The skin reflects light like the surface of some ancient, viscous sea. The eyes are like a mirror. In them, Cassandra sees the same demon that peers out at the world from underneath her skin.

“Cassandra,” it says.

“Daniel.” An awful silence is seated on her mouth, but it is weakening. Slowly, grudgingly, her mind begins to trudge towards a conclusion. Towards a thought. She rises mutely from the ground, stands close to the bars. Daniel too steps closer, until they are face to face.

“Are all of us like this now?” she whispers. “The seekers?”

“Yes,” he says.

“How many?” Cassandra is not one for trembling, but she has never taken such a blow. All she remembers of her parents is the twitch of their feet as they hung from the gallows. That was not such a loss as this. Even her beloved brother was only one person, but there is a whole order to lose here. She is half-dizzy with waiting when Daniel speaks at last.

“Three dozen, in the dungeons,” Daniel says, and hesitates. “Lucius is dead now.”

“Yes.”

“What do you want us to do?” he asks.  Abominations must not be allowed to live, Cassandra wants to say, but the words stick in her mouth. She cannot. The words choke her, fill her mind, her throat, set her pulse racing, but she cannot give the order. She is no Lucius.

“Live,” she whispers.

 

There are ice crystals growing in the walls of Cassandra’s cell; they blossom like flowers, spread like red lyrium. Cassandra’s fingertips are blue. Night has come and gone; Cullen has slept and risen and slept and stoked the fire twice. Cassandra watches sightlessly, her head all filled with quiet. Daniel is gone, down to the dungeon with all the other abominations. Cassandra will not kill them. Cassandra will not kill herself. The rest follows.

“Cullen,” she says. “Let me out.” Cullen lifts his head and surveys her wearily.

“Why?”

“Let me out,” she repeats. “You want something from me, Cullen. Let us talk.”

“If you try to attack me, I will break your fingers.” It is a modest threat, but honest. She nods. Cullen unclips his sword and gives it to the templars standing watch outside the door before unlocking her gate.

They stand, face to face at last, two images in a mirror. Out of his armor, Cullen is exactly her height. He steps back. Cassandra steps forward. They walk, side by side, dancers in a strange waltz. Cassandra permits herself to be led to the window, where the two of them stand, side by side, and gaze down at the courtyard. Cassandra broke her arm tumbling from these walls; she did drills in the same spot the templars are drilling in now. This was her castle. She watches the behemoths slouch from place to place, clearing the snow with their broad arms, turned blue by the light flaring from the chapel.

“You despise the Chantry,” she observes.

“After what they did to us, how could I not?” His gaze, too, lingers on the Behemoths in the courtyard. “Red lyrium or blue, we are already doomed. But after us, there will be no more.”

“Let mine be the last sacrifice,” Cassandra murmurs, drawing a laugh from Cullen.

“I don’t think he’s listening,” he says. They watch the dawn breaking over the walls, the merciless sunlight blazing across the snow. A troop of soldiers is returning, a number of their men laid out on bloody stretchers. The Inquisition’s reach has grown long.

“What is it you want, Cullen?”

“Allies, I suppose, although I’d be content if you stopped attacking me.”

“You expect me to believe in your charity?”

“Are you not still alive?” Cullen asks. “What benefit do I derive from your sufferings, seeker, other than a hand at my throat? But I am not the Chantry. I have seen enough good men sacrificed.” A muscle flexes at the edge of his broad jaw. They are near the core of his madness, the knot of hate that drives him in his war against Thedas. “Lucius was a coward and a fool, more interested in his own glory than in his men. If you stay, I will expect better from you.”

“You speak as if I could leave,” Cassandra says. Something in her stirs. She has been floating ever since the chapel, parted from the world by a curtain of grief, but it is time. Time to put her foot on the path, time to walk again.

“Go, then. How do you think the Chantry will receive you? A whole life of devoted service, and they will ready the firewood the moment you tell them what the Seekers are. Or will you lie? You, who are in service of the truth.”

“The truth,” Cassandra echoes. There is a mass of ice inside her; it chills her limbs, makes her movements dull and slow, freezes her thoughts into brittle shapes. Everything inside of her is cold and clear, all of time spread out and frozen in front of her. There are no decisions left to be made. There is only the path leading into the merciless future.

“We are not allies, General. We are merely lying in the same grave.” Cullen does not dispute it.

“Perhaps. But we’ll make them pay for it just the same.” Cassandra regards him. They have turned away from the window, turned towards each other. Cullen is tall, red-eyed, marked by the grip of her fingers. His face burns with a fever flush, glowing like a candle. Malferath must have looked so, when he asked Andraste to go and sit by the silver pool with him, and yet she went.

“Blessed are the peacekeepers,” she says, and no more. Cullen will know the verse. It is the one they sing at all the templar funerals. Cullen smiles, but it is terribly bitter. He has drawn closer, so close than Cassandra could not draw a sword to strike him were she armed. Their mingled breath steams in the cold air.

“Our Lady of Perpetual Victory,” he says. “A dog might slink back to the hand it has bitten and be forgiven, but a slave never. If you would live, and live without fear, you must fight."

Cassandra does not recognize this line. She says. 

“Canticle of Shartan,” Cullen says. “It is a dissonant verse.” Cassandra thinks of the sunday sermons, of all the squires singing badly together in the choir, of the way they spoke the verses over and over until the words lost their meaning. If Cassandra must sing Malferath’s part for the last act, then she will do so. It is time, and past time. 

“You will have to teach it to me,” she says.


End file.
